In Texas You Can Get a Bill for Going Backward Through a Toll Booth

Those toll booths around Texas will take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill in the mail. And apparently, they'll do it even if your vehicle is headed through a booth backward while it's being towed. Can you get a toll bill even if there's no one in the vehicle? Yep.

One Texas pickup owner got a bill in the mail for $85.50 for tolls racked up by a Ford truck that he used to own. Bobby Lynn from Rosenberg (outside Houston) donated the truck to Texans Can Cars for Kids, which is a charity that auctions vehicles to help at-risk kids graduate from high school, and got the bill for all the tolls later on.

The Harris County Toll Road Authority had pictures of the license plate going through the toll booth, but you can see it's going backward and there was no one inside the cab.

The official word is the HCTRA is going to "review this driver's inquiry" and "gladly provide resolution." So maybe he won't have to pay.

The bigger lesson here is that our summer travels might bring some extra bills a few weeks after we get home. In addition to a few in East Texas, the Houston and Dallas areas are covered in various toll roads and almost all of them operate on systems that link credit cards to toll tags or take pictures of license plates and send the bill after the fact. Traffic keeps moving, but we have to settle up later.